The Rockets starting line-up plays better with D-Mo

Terrence Jones may be playing mediocre basketball this preseason, but his mediocre has still been better overall than what the "new and improved" D. Mo has been doing. Sad but true.

 

DMo has stunk this preseason.

He has shown absolutely no improvement from his rookie year. Sigh.

 

Nope. Although jones has been more consistent than dmo . Consistently bad that is . He has had maybe two good games ( if you include tonight ). Dmo has had two bad games the rest have been good to great . This is all with jones getting the lions share of minutes and the overwhelming majority of minutes with the starters . I have high hopes for both players , but right now jones is an offensive black hole and defensive liability who collects an occasional easy dunk or block. Dmo on the other hand plays team basketball on a completely higher level with screens and passing, as well as team D . Despite all of this he hasn't gotten a damn start the entire preseason. He deserves a chance based off his play.

Ps yes he had an 0-11 shooting night tonight. Dmo reminds me a lot of Lin in that he really needs to have confidence to play well. When he is putting out results on the court and gets minimal burn it's easy to feel down. I'm dumbfounded as to why he hasn't gotten PT this preseason . Maybe he sucks in practice .,.. Or McHale is an idiot.

 

You say he hasn't gotten playing time. He has gotten 20 minutes per game. Jones has gotten 24. Pretty fair split in my opinion.

D. Mo has been good to great? I'm not seeing what you're referring to. Also if Jones is going up against starters doesn't that mean D. Mo is matching up against inferior backups when he is out there? It cuts both ways. I don't care about Harden and Howard being on the floor if I'm going up against Anthony Davis and Omer Asik and you get to push around Ryan Anderson and manage to grab only 1 rebound in 20 minutes. Terrence is in a shooting funk. It is an anomaly most likely. He shot 54% last season. As inconsistent and frustrating as he has been, D. Mo has shown even less consistency and has yet to prove that he deserves consistent minutes. He has a golden opportunity in front of him to seize a starting position and establish himself as a viable NBA rotation player and even though Jones has been wildly inconsistent, he has not done anything to warrant supplanting him in the starting lineup. In other words, they have both been meh and underwhelming the majority of the time.

http://espn.go.com/nba/player/_/id/6464/donatas-motiejunas

http://espn.go.com/nba/player/_/id/6597/terrence-jones

 

Most of Dmo's value in these games comes from his excellent defense and the movement he helps create on offense . Sure jones shoots a high percentage but most of his shots are easy looks . I do think jones right now is a better finisher than dmo but that doesn't negate that overall he gets much easier looks.

As for the point that dmo plays against inferior players and should put up better numbers for that reason , I don't completely buy it if your own teammates are equally if not less productive . Dmo plays a great TEAM game and this is something that can only be observed by watching the games. I'm not gonna say flat out DMo is unquestionably better, but he deserves a shot to play with the starting unit .

As for him getting almost equal minutes , it's more the way the minutes have been distributed . Example 1 . McHale says PF is open competition. Game 1 of preseason dmo plays great , jones sucks dmo plays more minutes that game because of how bad jones is . The next game you would think the dmo gets about the same amount of minutes and maybe some play with the starters. Nope , he gets his minutes cut. I know at that point you want to take a look at other players , but you have a player who responds to the challenge at the very position of need and his minutes get cut...

Also from the last game before this one . Jones sucks first half, Dmo has one of his better first halves .. I mean really looks good . Only gets 9:40 to jones 14. Then in the second half dmo gets all of 5 minutes until the last minute of the game for a grand total of 16 minutes .

When dmo has played well he is not frequently rewarded. Jones gets min no matter what and minutes with the starters . There is more working against dmo if you want more of my opinions on that , but just on minutes alone he is gettin screwed.

 

The simple fact is that none of our potential starting 4's looked very good this preseason, none of them stepped up and earned the starting job. That means that while the team is probably best off with DMo starting due to him being the best fit with the rest of the starters, Jones will probably remain starter for a while. It's pretty disappointing, I was hoping the open competition would lead to some good basketball being played but that simply didn't happen.

 

Jones had a decent game tonight. (I was actually at the game). DMo just had a really bad night and couldn't get into any rhythm. None of our potential PF's have really stood out this pre-season and DMo still needs to find his game. DMo is better than what we saw today but not vastly better. Hopefully our potential PF's can play well enough to attract a team to take a chance on them in a trade.

 

I think Morey will try to upgrade the 4 by trade deadline unless either or both TJones/DMo take off. One of them will be gone by end of this season and hopefully we'll have a veteran in there playing alongside Harden and Howard.

 

So after reading three pages the answer is..

THEY BOTH SUCK!!!!

T_Man

 

DMo played pretty bad today, but this wasn't the case for the entire preseason. Before this game his defense was pretty darn good, it's the offense that was shaky. Today, however, he couldn't anything go his way. Still, he played better than T-Jones overall this preseason.

 

Watching the Lakers preseason game now, wish that Morey would have signed Ed Davis. Ed Davis is special and signed for only the minimum.

 

Dat Speshal Ed

 

meh adrian is better

 

That .600 from 10-16 feet was on 10 total shots for the whole season.

 

But if Terrence Jones was really coasting his way through Preseason as they say then it is safe to say who has more potential between those two.

Besides size.

 

He also shot .471 from 3 to 10 feet .. Means he has a decent touch . Plus you can see that his jumper has good form , just not the range . Although the same thing goes for Jones . I think both players have average to good 15 footer jumpers . Is 15 feet good enough range to create space ? Maybe . Maybe not.

 

I don't think Jones is coasting . He is giving decent effort . I think he legitimately has some deficiencies that are really hurting him . Number 1 ( same as Dmo ) he can't shoot. 2 poor team defender. 3 offensive black hole.

His shooting has been a little off , but generally he has played the same style he played last year. Oh and I agree that he will start , the job is his locked up for sure . Now I don't agree with the way the has earned it and feel that dmo deserved a chance to start some preseason games , also agree with OP that dmo is a better fit and could potentially make the starting lineup much more dynamic and better.

I'm more pissed off at the coach for the way he has been playing dmo and for basically gifting the job to jones even with his piss poor preseason . Over the course of the preseason I think it is clear that dmo has played better. I don't think coasting and overall talent have anything to do with the discussion. Both players are incredibly talented and both still need to do a lot of work to tap into their potential. What pisses me off is the declaration of open competition and mchale stating he wants D and rebounding . Over the course of the preseason Dmo has been more consistent in these areas and he damn well deserved a start .

 

i do think that from the eye test, DMo is a better fit coming off the bench given that he can produce offense from the low post and he has great chemistry with Papanikolaou

 

If what you are saying is true, then it would have been at least somewhat reflected in the statistics over an 82 game season? SURELY??

The fact that it wasn't, and that the opposite is true (ie, others shoot better) cannot simply be written off as 'oh well, he played with the starters'. It's a convenient argument from silence on an assumption that is unproven (ie, the assumption unproven is that he simply cannot provide space, and they are doing it in spite of him).

D-Mo just went 0-11, and deserves nothing. If he can prove he is better than Jones, well and good. But until then, the bench summons.

 

Well, all I can say to that is what makes the team win games.

Fans b**** a lot about shortcomings of the player whenever they feel like it even when they are winning games.

I could not care less who starts right now. Dmo or Terrence.

Terrence did well last season that is why he will be starting for a while.

I am all for Adrien or even Black starting some games because I trust their rebounding abilites.

It is all about winning at the end of the day in an all team effort and not a biased fan opinion because you like someone better than the other player.